My Magic+

Disney announced a new bracelet-based system for park-goers: My Magic+. Green, glowing bracelets equipped with RFID technology, will soon allow Disney World visitors to make payments, receive alerts and better navigate the massive park. It will also collect more data about the people wearing them — and undoubtedly raise questions about privacy and the ethics of data collection in the process.

via New York Times

Musical Message in a Bottle

Re: Sound Bottle captures ambient noise and remixes it into unique, unexpected tracks. The bottle’s cork interface controls when it both records and plays back the sounds it captured — a fun use of technology to enhance the soundtrack of everyday life.

via Laughing Squid

GIF-ITI

Here’s some awesome animated street art from UK artist INSA.

These start out as street art paintings, then the artist photographs them at various stages and compiles them into a GIF so that when viewed online they become a moving image! For the full experience, check them out here.

via Laughing Squid

Jumboltron

People in LA recently gathered to create a giant, crowd-sourced Jumbotron with their iPads. Why? Why not?

Jumboltron reminds us of this fun project from MIT that used different kinds of devices to forge one big viewing screen: 

Playing Tetris on a Building

Some folks at MIT hacked a building to play Tetris on the side of it.

via laughing squid

Frogger Using Real-time 5th Ave Traffic

5th Ave Frogger is a hacked version of Frogger pulling in real-time 5th Ave traffic as game data. If you’re in New York this weekend, you can play.

via laughing squid

Car Pong Anyone?

Hold the beer and check out BBDO Germany’s Smart eBall installation for the third generation Smart car.
Cars play pong against each other to showcase the road responsiveness of this next gen version of the car.

Light-painting wifi

This project illuminates the flow of invisible wifi networks. A wifi measuring rod lights up depending on the strength of wifi signals, and long-exposure photographs capture the light’s as the rod moves through space.

Musical House

Roof-mounted sensors translate light, rain, wind and thunder inputs to generate an impromptu musical score.

Drawing its sounds directly from the elements, no day’s synthesizer-style music is the same — who knew lightning could sound like reverb and that moonlight purrs?

Another take on a musical house from the artist Swoon: http://kck.st/lDCdCT 

Via Laughing Squid

Finding your way…

Two mobile apps for navigating the city in two very different ways:

Embark – maps plus some more hand-holding (i.e. alerts, underground access)

Via Laughing Squid

Serendipitor – maps plus simple instructions to follow along the way — for the more whimsical commuter